The feds are criminally prosecuting big
tobacco companies for smuggling
cigarettes into Canada. (Never mind
addicting young kids to smoke and
thus
condemning them to a certain, albeit,
slow, death -- can't criminally
prosecute them for that.)

There's a bull market in stock fraud.

Prescription drugs may cause 100,000
deaths a year.

Two Fox-TV reporters in Florida are
fired for trying to report on
adverse
health effects associated with
genetically engineered foods.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture
proposes that genetically engineered
foods be labelled "organic."

Coal companies continue to cheat on air
quality tests as hundreds of
coal
miners continue to die each year from
black lung disease.

The North American Securities
Administrators Association estimates
that
Americans lose about $1 million a hour
to securities fraud.

Companies that have workers die on the
job continue to be met with
fines.
Criminal prosecutions still rare.

This is the price we pay for living in
Corporate America. Wealth
disparity, megamergers and the resulting
consolidation of corporate
power,
commercialism run amok, rampant
corporate crime, death without justice,
pollution, cancer and an unrelenting
attack on democracy.
The 1998 market run-up might make
plugged-in America feel good about
itself, but big business is eating out
the democratic foundation of the
country, and when the empty shell
crumbles, what kind of chaos might we
anticipate?

If you have justice on your mind,
herewith for the tenth consecutive
year
is Multinational Monitor's effort to
pinpoint those responsible. It is,
admittedly, a short list -- the Ten
Worst Corporations of 1998. But it
is
a representative list, and as the damage
becomes more apparent, as the
outrage at, and contempt for, our
fearless leaders grows, surely the
list,
too, will grow.

The Ten Worst
Corporations of 1998 are:

* Chevron, for continuing to do
business with a brutal dictatorship in
Nigeria and for alleged complicity in
the killing of civilian
protesters.

* Coca-Cola, for hooking America's
kids on sugar and soda water. Today,
teenage boys and girls drink twice as
much soda pop as milk, whereas 20
years ago they drank nearly twice as
much milk as soda.

* General Motors, for becoming an
integral part of the Nazi war
machine,
and then years later, when documented
proof emerges, denying it.

* Loral and its chief executive Bernard
Schwartz, for dumping $2.2
million
into Clinton/Gore and Democratic Party
coffers. The Clinton
administration
responded by approving a human rights
waiver to clear the way for
technology transfers to China.

* Mobil, for supporting the
Indonesian military in crushing an
indigenous
uprising in Aceh province and allegedly
allowing the military to use
company machinery to dig mass graves.

* Monsanto, for introducing genetically
engineered foods into the
foodstream without adequate safety
testing and without labeling, thus
exposing consumers to unknown risks.

* Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, for
pleading guilty to felony crimes
for
dumping oil in the Atlantic Ocean and
then lying to the Coast Guard
about it.

* Unocal, for engaging in numerous
acts of pollution and law
violations,
to such a degree that citizens in
California petitioned the state's
attorney general to revoke the company's
charter.

* Wal-Mart, for crushing small town
America, for paying low, low wages
(a
huge percentage of Wal-Mart workers are
eligible for food stamps), for
using Asian child labor and for
homogenizing the population; and last,
but
not least,

* Warner-Lambert, for marketing a
hazardous diabetes drug, Rezulin,
which
has been linked to at least 33 deaths
due to liver injuries.

As the millennium approaches, keep your
eyes open for nasty corporate
predators in your neck of the woods.
Keep a list. Check it twice. Then
send along your nominations for the Ten
Worst Corporations of 1999.
Happy New Year.

In a recent commentary on the US/NATO war I
suggested that N A T O could stand for No
Action Too Obscene. Since then I and my wife
have thought of a few others...and with the
help of a couple other people we have come up
with a short list of alternative meanings for
this acronym. If YOU have any to contribute
please email me or post them in the BoardRoom
and I'll put them on the following list. So,
here's what we've come up with so far:

No Action Too Obscene
Nineteen-Eighty-Four After The Onslaught
Never A Target Overlooked
New Attempt to Obfuscate
Nuclear American Terrorist Organization
Never Accept The Obvious
Neurotic Attention To Oil
New Attempt To Obliterate

The following is a
graphic illustration of what the earth's
population consists of...and maybe the shape
of things to come. Although there are other
measures one could use, these suffice to make
the point. I do not know who wrote it...I
certainly didn't...but I present it here for
your consideration. If anyone knows the
author/source, let me know...please

If we could shrink the Earth's population to
a village of precisely 100 people, with all
existing human ratios remaining the same, it
would look like this:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 European, 14
from the Western Hemisphere (North and
South), and 8 African

51 would be female; 49 would be male

70 would be nonwhite; 30 white

70 would be non-Christian; 30
Christian

50% of the entire world's wealth would be
in the hands of only 6 people, and all 6
would be citizens of the United States

80 would be living in substandardized
housing

70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer fro malnutrition

1 would be near death; 1 would be near
birth

Only 1 would have a college education

No one would own a computer

When one considers our world from such an
incredibly compressed perspective, the need
for both tolerance and understanding become
glaringly apparent.